Rance: Sabaku no Guardian

Few swordsmen alive are as skilled as Rance — and none are as aware of it as he is. He's also narcissistic, casually cruel, and treats his devoted slave Sill like furniture — yet somehow she's still loyal to him. That tension sits at the center of this 2-episode OVA from 1993, based on Alice Soft's long-running eroge game series. The setup drops Rance and Sill into a dusty, forgotten desert village that's under attack from a group of sorceresses trying to resurrect an ancient demon. Rance gets hired to deal with it. Whether he actually deserves to be called a hero by the end is... debatable, to put it gently. The appeal here is the dark comedic angle. Rance isn't a reluctant antihero with a hidden heart of gold — he's genuinely awful, and the story doesn't really apologize for that. It plays his awfulness for laughs while still putting real stakes on the table. That kind of morally murky protagonist was a distinct flavor of 90s adult anime, and this wears it openly. The animation has that rough, grounded 1993 aesthetic — nothing polished, but it fits the gritty desert tone. If you've seen Baldr Force EXE or Mad Bull 34 and you appreciate adult anime that leans into uncomfortable protagonists without sanitizing them, this scratches a similar itch. It's a short, specific thing — two episodes, one arc, no padding.